Tick Tick Tick Tick, May is creeping by

May in South Florida is much like every other month in South Florida. Hot and Humid with a chance of pop-up showers EVERY DAY AT 2:00 - which is exactly when school lets out!! No, seriously, May is pretty much a throwaway month scholastically. Basically once the kids put their pencils down after the last day of taking the FCAT in April, the learning stops.  So we have a whole month of doing very little.  It was all I could do to not rip the kids out of school a month early so we could start our vacation early - super early!!  Instead we get to wait around to see if Lilly passed the dreaded FCAT.  If she did - YEAH!!  If not, well then she gets to repeat third grade.   Even though she has gotten A's and B's all year if she fails the test then she fails 3rd grade.  Seems a little harsh. So we wait...

Kindergarten does a pretty cool thing here in Broward County.  Every child takes two weeks of swimming lessons.  Now Ben has had several years of swimming lessons already under his belt, but it was scary to see how many of his classmates were experiencing it for the first time!

But after I helped the children change from their swimming clothes to their school uniforms, I realized that a rather large number had difficulty doing it (dressing themselves) and I thought there may be a reason why they can't swim.  I mean, come on.  If your six year old cannot get dressed by themselves, swimming may not be a high priority.  

 

May also ushered in the end of my soccer season.  I was super excited to find an over-30 women's soccer league here in Pembroke Pines.  Even better, the games were held at the park behind the kid's school.  So every Sunday since September, I have been playing soccer.  It has been great to play again.  All of the teams are assembled "randomly" so you don't have one team that is super good and the rest not as good.  Our team was pretty good and we came into the end of the season tournament in second place.  We tied our first game and had to go to penalty kicks.  Ugh.  I have not done a penalty kick in twenty years!  Missed it, but we still won.  The refs gave us a 15 minute rest and we started our second game of the day.  That one ended in a tie too!  Another round of penalty kicks, another win for our team.  Another 15 minute break and then the 3rd game of the day.  THIRD GAME OF THE DAY!!  Hello, I am too old to play 3 games in one day.  Well guess what?  This one also ended in a tie - shocker. So yet another round of penalty kicks.  Anyone else see a pattern here?  Well we won!!!  Talk about a surprise!  It felt awesome - not so much the next day however.  My toes hurt for a week!  We got a pretty cool "trophy" for all our pain: a personal wheeled cooler!  I have been in plenty of leagues that actually give a trophy at the end of the season.  I am sorry, but no one over the age of 10 wants a trophy.  A personal wheeled cooler - I think so!
   

 Mother's day was pretty low key.  Jim got up and fixed breakfast - thankfully no breakfast in bed again.  I got some pretty nifty artwork and homemade cards from the kids which is always special and Jim gave me a cool black jade and lapis bracelet - SCORE!.  I had seen somewhere, probably on Pinterest, that some lady with way more time on her hands than me, had gathered up all the Mother's Day cards she had gotten over the years and put them into a journal and then requested that instead of the family buying her a card every year, that they write in the journal instead.  Brilliant!  So I went through several boxes and found quite a few of the cards from years past but not all of them.  I know I have them somewhere!  I just can't seem to put my hands on them.  I am holding off gluing the cards into the box because I know the minute I do I will find the missing cards and the book will be "wrong".  I haven't even started this project and I am already off on the wrong foot.  Hopefully I can remember where I stashed the missing cards so at the very least the kids can start next year on the journaling of what a great mother I am! Ha Ha Ha

Ok, here is a funny story for you. We have this table on our side patio that the landlords left.  Originally I was pretty excited to not have to worry about putting something out there.  As time has gone on, the excitement has worn off.  The table is the heaviest table known to man!!  It is a granite/marble/lead lined obstacle.  Seriously, it is heavy!  To add insult to injury, there is a heavily mildewed blue rug-like piece of material that sits under it.  Awesome!!  So Jim and I discussed moving the table to accommodate the new shade sail we were going to install.  No problem!  I got this!*

        *this will be the LAST positive thought I will have throughout this whole debacle.

Jim left town for a few days, I decided to surprise him by moving the table while he was gone.  I started by attempting to inch it over.  No good.  Then I tipped the table up on its side. Now we were getting somewhere.  Nowhere good, but somewhere.  That was all I could do for the first day, so I took a break and slept on it. 

I sacrificed a broom to keep my ledge available

The next day, it went from bad to worse.  I attempted to just tip the table back over...this sounded good in my head.  Rrrrriiiipppp.  That sound was the sound of ALL four legs being pried from the table.  Sigh.  Maybe a glass of wine would help me think.

New day, new plan.  I still had a few days before Jim was due home. I grabbed the dolly and some floor jacks and a few cinder blocks.

Well at this point I came clean to Jim.  He couldn't believe I had even tried to do this without him or that I was able to get it back to this point.  I officially gave up at this point.  Then something CRAZY happened.  This whole time, the table was intact and perfect except it was missing legs.  Then the night before Jim was due home, we had a horrible storm and when I woke up the next morning there was a CRACK down the middle of the table.  Did it get struck by lightening?  Well that is my story. So now not only do I have a table without legs, it is split down the middle.  Can this get any worse?  Well turns out, it can't.  I borrowed a few more cinder blocks, I jacked it up a bit higher and we screwed the legs back on and we are back in business!  Now, to tell the landlord.

 
Memorial Day was going to be a huge Wellonsfest in Key West, but then we decided to stick closer to home and knock off a few more local items on our South Florida list (oh you know there is a list)!

Saturday found us in Key Largo snorkeling an awesome coral reef at John Pennekamp State Park.  This is a HUGE deal, because now all three children are old enough to do more advanced day trips.  We tried to take some pictures with our super cool water proof camera.  Sadly, it died.  Not a total shocker, since it started having problems when we were in Rhode Island.  Oh well.  The snorkeling was awesome! We saw so many fish, it felt like we were inside an aquarium!  We will definitely do that again!! Afterward we drove over to a marina that has tarpons hanging out next to the fish cleaning station.  Some of those tarpons were BIG!!  I almost felt sorry for the lone pelican that was trying to score a free meal. 

 

As noted in a previous entry, Ben played baseball this spring and his Daddy was the coach.  I am not sure what place they ended up in thier league and the size of the trophy is no indication.  Every kid gets a trophy of course.  But they both enjoyed having some "man" time together each Saturday and of course their shared love of the game helped to make lasting memories.  Not enough for Ben to play baseball again in the fall however.  He announced he wanted to play flag football.  Maybe Coach Jim can make the transition too!



 

Speaking of baseball, we finally got to a Marlins game!  The stadium is super nice!  Almost too nice really.  It was a nice sunny day, so we dressed for the conditions, however the roof was closed and the air conditioner was PUMPING!! I should have brought a coat.   Lucy and I were freezing!!  I think it did not help that the game was poorly attended.  I mean there was no one there, but the thermostat was set for a full house.  The upper deck was closed and there were still seats all over the place.  We stayed until the seventh inning stretch and then bolted to attend a friend's BBQ.  Fun times!

Memorial Day we attended a ceremony in which Jim's boss was the Guest Speaker.  In typical Florida fashion it was muggy and unbearably hot by 10:00am.  It was also an incredibly moving tribute to the men, women and family members of our service members who have died protecting our shores and fighting for the freedoms so many of us take for granted.. 
 

Finally the end of the May!  We have just 2 weeks of school left.  The children are as tired of it as I am.  Every day we are counting down to summer vacation. However there are a few things we need to take care of before we go.  Awards Day!  This is basically a graduation ceremony without all the robes and whatnot. Instead the grade as a whole sings and performs for the parents and then each class gets time to recognize what the individual students did throughout the year. The Accelerated Reader (AR) awards are also given out at this time.
For those of you not familiar with AR, it is reading program in which students read books within their determined reading level and then take a test on that book.  Points are awarded based on the score of the test.
Ben was the top AR points reader in his class with 145 points!!  He was super excited to share the stage with two of his friends that also happened to be in his class!!

 

The very next day, it was Lucy's turn!  She came in second place for all of second grade in AR points with a total of 373.3 points!  Impressive!!
 



 









 

I am so proud of my children for being so flexible and not just surviving but actually thriving in every new situation the Marine Corps has thrown at us.  We have been fortunate to have Daddy home with us for 10 years but that has come at a rather harsh price of moving every 2 years.  It is hard having to start over (for all of us).  These trophies are more than just about reading to me. They are an outward sign that Jim and I are doing something right even though we continue to struggle daily with the challenges of raising our family.

That leaves us with just one Awards day left - Lilly!  Third grade was scheduled for Monday June 2nd. We will have to wait to see if she also can bring home an AR trophy.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that she did it!!  There will no living with her if she didn't.  Ugh.

What started out as a slow month really picked up steam at the end.  The very last item on our calendar was a skating party for the girls Brownie troop.  Our crowd loves to skate as much as I do so we were all excited about this!  What a great way to end the year celebrating with our fabulous Brownie troop!  We love that they allowed us to join them mid-year and the girls can't wait until the fall do continue on their "journeys".



 

Ok, I lied.  I have one more item.  This is the plant that I have all but ignored since we arrived in South Florida.  I mean I have watered it, but little else.  Well look who popped up to say hello and goodbye!  I hope you continue to be so low maintenance, because I am getting ready to leave you with Jim for over a month.  Warn the others.